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How would you construct a bid for this project?

Based on just the following, how would you bid this? 30 second HD video(to run on cable tv system) delivered on a SD card. Two actresses speaking 6 scripted lines each in front of a furniture store during a weekday 30 miles distant. Plenty of street noise.

Do you need to scout the location to determine best placement of camera/best time of day to shoot?

Are you writing the script or is the client providing it?

Are the shots with each actress one long shot each or a sequence of shots?

How difficult will it be to properly light and mike for the shoot?

Will you have to dub in talent audio in post? (You may need professional talent who can pace their narration exactly in multple takes)

Does the client want any music in the background or at any point in the video?

Are there any FX or special titling needs?

What file format do they want the final video in?

Here's a basic guess at what might be involved:

One hour to load gear and get to location.

One hour or more to set up for shot (lights, mikes, talent).

One hour or more to get shots.

One hour to reload and return to base.

Assuming a $500 day rate, it would be a one day shoot and one day to edit and then two actresses at say $200 each your basic bid might be around $1400. Depending on how you generally handle things you may charge for travel or not. Special FX and music would add on to the cost.

High definition shouldn't even enter into this - who really shoots SD anymore?

Just shooting and editing, $100 per hour is a good average, and plan on 8 hours or more as a contingency. In most of my commercial gigs the client/producer is responsible for acquiring/paying talent, or if a full crew is needed I charge accordingly for each area of crew services and add 10 percent for contengencies.

As Luis notes, day rates work if you have the experience and equipment to make things work.

As an amatuer.. and curious... is this plan for just a one camera shot?

I would assume a professional job would have multi-cams with multi-views on something which the OP described. So would that be part of the regular hourly fee, or would you consider that an addition to the cost. I mean, assuming a totally different setup for each additional cam.

As an amatuer.. and curious... is this plan for just a one camera shot?

I would assume a professional job would have multi-cams with multi-views on something which the OP described. So would that be part of the regular hourly fee, or would you consider that an addition to the cost. I mean, assuming a totally different setup for each additional cam.

Two camera shoot can be prohibitively expensive. The two camera look is easily achieved with one camera with multiple angles/views.

There are so many variables in this scenario, which is why I rarely bid straight on a query like this. I always ask defining questions in order to know the paramenters of the shoot so my bid is accurate. Without information I could underbid (and lose money) or overbid (and scare the client away).